Nina Lear Margaret Paxton was born in 1896. She married C.B. Paxton and became a registered nurse. On July 3, 1937, while living in Ashland, Kentucky, Nina Paxton heard a short-wave radio transmission that she believed to be the distress call of Amelia Earhart, one day after Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared in the Pacific. Upon reading reports that Earhart and Noonan had disappeared, Mrs. Paxton began efforts to share the information she gleaned from the distress call with George Palmer Putnam, Amy Otis Earhart, Mrs. Frederick Noonan, publishers, and Naval intelligence officers in the hope that Earhart and Noonan could be found. Mrs. Paxton heard other transmissions from Amelia Earhart's radio call letters in the months and years following the initial distress call. She continued to write letters about this experience and collect articles about Amelia Earhart until close to the time of her death in 1970.